Stuff Guys Care About: A Good Fight III aka THE BIGGEST FIGHT EVER!!!

SGCA: A Good Fight III aka THE BIGGEST FIGHT EVER!!!!! Or at least until the next one comes along... which at this rate will be in a month or so...

As the lights went out I could feel the excitement in the air. It wasn't totally dark, mostly due to cell phones and entrance signs across the room. Maybe the glow from the computer and television monitors, looking out with dozens of camera spread around us for recording what happened that evening. Maybe sparks from the camera flash of a young girl sitting a few seats down who couldn't wait to start snapping pics. Still dark enough to bring the entire crowd under submission. We were brought together under one roof for the purpose of screaming at one accord. Using our collective voice to deafen the ears of gladiators. I could see the shadow of one standing behind the darkness, waiting for the spark lighting the indoor fireworks display to burst open. This champion awaited his musical killing instructions along with are deep appreciation. He knows his mission, and chooses to accept with no greater reward but the satisfaction of the voices waiting silently in the darkness. We all nervously wait, told that this fight will be bigger and better than anything we have seen...

I can remember being a young child the first time I ever saw professional wrestling live and in person. I was maybe six years old when my uncle, Ponce, drove the crew up to the coliseum in Jacksonville. For the month before I counted down the days until I would see Ric Flair versus Dusty Rhodes, promised by Gordon Solie that this would be the match to end all matches. We sat really high up in the stands and I remember not liking it as much because I couldn't hear the announcers. Plus the giants I had fallen in love with on television every Saturday seemed so small. Wait, maybe this was the circus. Either way since then I have attended maybe hundreds of live events ranging from concerts to sporting events to even a few more of those wrestling shows. One thing I can say is that they have all managed to accomplish one goal. Each event convinced me that if I did not attend, I would some how miss out on something big. Time would stop after this show. Nothing else would be able to compare. It would be the greatest, coolest, even the best deal ever. The event of the century.

Getting older I have found that the biggest fight ever seems to happen all the time. Every promoter is going to promise that the event they are putting together will be good. So good in fact that it is better than good. To borrow from Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, the fight will be AWSOME! By the way, HIMYM, best show ever!

Ok but serious folks, everything is advertised to be bigger and better than the next. The i-Phone is better than your phone. Pepsi taste better than Coke. How I Met Your Mother is better than any other comedy on television. It's all about competition and beating the other guy. The idea is that whatever you are advertising has an advantage over the competitor, and hopefully intelligent consumers will realize this and go with the company with the better product.

Now this whole advertising = war deal can be broken down into any sector of your life. Take relationships for example. When you are courting the opposite sex with the purpose of finding a mate, it is important to give qualities which show yourself in a positive light. You want for the person to see why they should choose you over any other suitors. Doesn't matter if you are looking for someone to spend a night or a lifetime with, you still have the same goal of convincing this person that they should pick you over any other available persons.

If your goal is to finish school, then you are in the fight of your life with knowledge, and must convince your brain (and teachers) that you have retained the correct amount of information necessary to perform intelligent task. In order to get a job, you have to convince the person across the table that your qualifications and drive are not only above and beyond any other applicant who has come before you, but any that will come after you as well. Passing up on your hiring will be the gravest mistake in that manager's professional career.

I have a close friend of mine who I was talking to one day. She was a little stressed about starting a new job which would require her to go door-to-door. Apparently not everyone has sales experience she thought, and though the product was good she feared not being able to support herself. I asked her what she enjoyed doing on her spare time and she responded about how she had done a lot of missionary work and would like to continue that. I then laughed at her. Not because of why you would think I would laugh at someone in her situation or her beliefs, but because she had kind of missed the point a little bit and I thought the laughter would break up things. My totally nameless friend wants to spend her time convincing complete strangers to switch their personal spirituality and conform to her religious beliefs, and she is telling me that she doesn't have sales experience? Yeah you can apply the idea of the biggest fight ever to anything.

Now you don't need a Harvard MBA or anything to figure out that there has been a couple of good knock-down dragged-out sloberknockers lately. This is a very exciting time in the lives of sports fans. NBA and NHL action are starting to kick in, while NFL works on the second half of their season. My beloved Jags are not doing well. As I type they are facing the Tennessee Titans in what I am sure is billed as an epic game. One team undefeated so far this season facing their biggest rivals. Now though it is much easier on my blood pressure to spend the afternoon facing away from the television, stuck in my edit bay, refusing to even take phone calls from friends and family with updates...I am almost in shock that I haven't turned around the computer yet to watch this event. What keeps me from it, the fact that I know no matter what the outcome I am sure that CBS will be billing next weeks games to be just as big and awesome as last weeks. They just keep getting bigger and better!

Hopefully Jacksonville has tweaked the mistakes on defense and surd up the WR spot which has not seen a lot of love lately. I still say they have a shot of heading down here for the big game next year, a match that I am sure many Bucs fans would like to also see their team in. For Tampa Bay the key honestly is finding someone they can trust with the ball both at QB and RB. Williams apparently will be rejoining the team from the injured list and hopefully that will help. They did well today though with Garcia, who I don't see why Gruden put through any sort of pain earlier by not making him the starter. Sure you can grab a new quarterback but if your is winning games why rock the boat?

My next few weekends are all booked, so I am not sure when I will have time to sit back and enjoy a game at home. Between work and holiday visits and work and vacations and work, I sometimes feel that I will never see my couch again. I dream of the good old days with wings, beer, and male bonding in front of the big screen. Though I am sure it is good for my budget, seems kind of bad for my testosterone level. Sure enough when that Sunday comes, the only fight at my place will be how long my fiancé can stay out with the girls shopping to give the boys some space.

Fiancé... HA! Weird! The word still sounds like a French disease.

Speaking of weird, did anyone last year think we would be talking about a Rays World Series? Rather than waste your time with more than enough boring baseball stats and comments on how long I kept the Mohawk, I will instead just say that those boys were a pleasure to watch this season. I became a converted home team fan. It was actually kind of fun seeing everyone around with actual local pride, coming together with excitement and energy. My only hope is that the off season doesn't become a fire sale like we have seen with some clubs like the Marlins for example. The direct year after winning they trade or release valuable players ending up back in last place. Hopefully the Rays will take advantage of having one of the lowest payrolls in professional sports and keep our dream team.

Now for the big one, the fight of the century that took place a few weeks ago. Three fights to be exact. First was a few Sundays ago at the Premier Bridal Show. This was promised to be the biggest pre-wedding event in the Tampa area, with hundreds of vendors that you just had to meet in order to decide how and were to spend your most important day of money spending ever. At least this was booked to be a big fight, but honestly just makes a good warm up match. To say that I ended up in the corner with the other grooms would be an understatement. I was actually happy to see that other males were brave enough to show their faces in public for something like this.

Now I think that I have been punished with what we see on television about wedding shows. Somehow I expected a room full of Bridezillas fighting over the last white dress. Instead I got a room half full of vendors fighting over the maybe fifty brides. Kind of wanted more in a way from this one. Even Pam was totally uninterested in this mess, walking out saying that the only new idea she found for a venue was the Holiday Inn. We settled on the Grand Plaza in St Pete Beach by the way...

We did see one thing there that hit my attention. It's the '61 Silver Cloud that rents by the hour. Note to any sales people out there who look to make money in this tough economy: Look your potential customers in the eye and address them like humans. Mike from Ambassador Limos did just that and now he has business for next year!

Now I am like most guys in that we want to get married, but could care less about certain aspects of the typical wedding. I think it has to do with sitting through a large number of them over the past few years in my former life as a DJ. For us it is important to have family, friends, food, and some killer hardware. Some of the other stuff like tablecloths...yeah you can pick that out sweetie. Honestly and women pay attention to these next few words because this could make or break your next relationship: As long as it doesn't look bad, we are cool with it!

Now taste do vary, but for me bad includes anything stereotypical, pink, frilly, lacey, girly, or seen on BRAVO, HGTV, or WE in some design show. In fact if you got the idea while watching any show with the word "bride" in it, I would definitely go against it unless you are paying for it yourself. By yourself I do not mean with 'our' money but with 'your' money. Men don't buy this crap. We have more important things to spend our cash on... Like wrestling tickets!

So anyway the next night, and I would say in exchange for me throwing on a smile and being the swag tote guy, I get to receive the return on compromise and attend a live broadcast of Monday Night Raw. Now though I will have to set the DVR to not only record the broadcast so I can hear commentators (and How I Met Your Mother) the trade off is the excitement of waiting for these giants to come from behind the curtain and entertain. That is the whole point of professional wrestling is entertainment. I bring that up only to bring up this.

In previous SGCA blogs, I have talked about another form of physical battle. Recently I have learned that maybe the wool has been kind of pulled over my eyes, along with yours as well. It seems that the Elite-XC has shut down, after bleeding funds and the possible fixing of fights. The last show on CBS earlier this month was the knockout blow of sorts, when Kimbo Slice laid down in defeat to Seth Petruzelli in less time than the average sound bite cut in my edit bay. Honestly in watching the broadcast on October 4th I was halfway shocked and halfway wishing for the pain to end. Seems the only fight I got right was with Gina Corrarno, and her match with Cyborg may be picked up by Affliction. Kind of makes me sad that people who have worked and fought their way towards a goal could see it end by no fault of their own.

A little fast forward in reality here while I am talking MMA, congrats to the new UFC heavyweight champ, Brock Lesner. This guy for those who are not familiar is a big ol' corn fed boy who has been former NCAA and WWE champ. I didn't get to watch the fight due to being stuck in an edit bay but hope to find an illegal copy on YouTube this week to check out. Say what you want but I am sure he is a real deal for a solid promotion. I am sure some sports purist will leave a comment on how barbaric the sport is or how Dana White has to be fixing fights in order to keep people interested in the reality show. I say let Brock hit you one time and tell me if it is fake. I have a good friend that I worked with a few years back who dated him back in college. She agrees that he is as big as he looks on the tube, but actually kind of a sweetheart. Not sure why she would break up with him... maybe that is what drove him to the success.

Oh well, stick with the fake stuff! The night was exactly what I wanted and more in a sense. DX took on Miz and Morrison while Chris Jericho reclaimed the world heavyweight belt from Batista. Though I had the chance to meet Dave Batista once, I have to stick with my root for the heals notion and cheer when he left the cage bloody and with empty hands. It was the main event in what some will call a lackluster card. Even Pam, who would rather watch some girly home decorating show, was energized watching the two men battle. Just next time I have to remember to not get tickets so close to the entry ramp and subsequent fireworks. Did I not learn my lesson from Wrestlemania?

After that is our main event. This is truly the battle to end all battles, or at least to hopefully end all commercials and coverage for the next four years. This grudge match pitted change versus change depending on whose promises you believed. John McCain versus Barack Obama... versus Bob Bar versus Ralph Nader versus I could keep going on with third party candidates. Wow, what an event! You know, not to step back in time but, the night before the election I was sitting there watching a taped segment with both guys from a few months back. It was interesting to see and hear what they (And Hillary Clinton) had to say then and what cheep pops and catch phrases were used. McCain used many of the lines from heals past including the great Ric Flair. Obama couldn't help being the face putting is on spin on one of The Rock's lines. After that they had a mock match with wrestlers dressed as Clinton and Obama. I think WWE missed a golden moment in not getting someone to dress up as McCain to come from behind with a steel chair. That could have swayed a few votes.

The thing about politics and this election is that is just seems like a build up to what is suppose to be the biggest decision of our lives, but only ends up as a quick and dirty way to plan for the next show. Almost as quick as the WWE started plugging away for Survivor Series, rumors have already started as who the GOP will put up in 2012. Palin, Pawlenty, Crist, and Jindal have all become national household names recently almost as quickly as Huckabee, Romney, and Giuliani were the new faces of the party less than four years ago. Personally I like Charlie Crist and would like to see him have a career outside of our state at some point. I have a like for Sarah Palin...but it involves a Roar cheerleading outfit. (Too soon? Sorry, still a guy!) Still I think she could hang with any of these guys becoming the bright star that could top the ticket in four years. If you don't believe me when I say that 2012 is not that far away, and that people are looking now to see who could lead, then just ask Obama how long he was in the national spotlight.

Still it was a great match or election as some people would call it. Not everyone got their way on everything, but it seems the people have spoken and the majority will receive the gift soon. I can say it was both weird and exciting for me to watch things unfold. I am excited for Obama, and for the direction that our country will hopefully go. Plus on a personal note, coming into work and picking up a newspaper that has a guy who looks a little like myself on the front cover was...wait for it...awesome!